Ethan towered over the three great powers of Argwyll.

  The broken glass image of Krea beneath him was shrouded in his shadow. His wings spread till they eclipsed the rising sun behind and, with his newest skill, time itself now bowed to his command.

  Each of them had at least 5000 HP split between them.

  And he had twenty seconds to wipe them out.

  So he spread his hands wide, cracked his neck, and let fly everything he had in the tank. He could have done so from the start, but the performance was necessary. This little bit of a theatre here would show the humanity’s last stronghold that the Archon was here. And Keadmon – well – his gaze was turned away.

  Rain marred the pallid cheeks of his Host. For a short couple of seconds, he looked past the clouded skies and wondered if Kaedmon was up there, looking at him right now. What was he thinking? What was he doing? Was he scared? Or had he simply accepted this fate that Ethan had decreed for his people?

  No answer came from those dark wisps hovering above. So, with the last moments of Timestop left, Ethan turned his attention right back down to his waiting audience.

  It was time for this drama to end.

  -Skills Activated-

  [Angel-Arm]

  [Azure-Arc]

  [Storm of Revok]

  [Cry of Baphomet]

  [Ray of Putrefaction]

  [Twilight Edge]

  [Spectral Snipe]

  [Ice Barrage]

  [Summon Shadow Wraith]

  The light of dawn faded from view. Everything did. Reality melted as it itself was blinded by the dazzling eruption of light that gushed from Ethan’s four palms, each carrying a different offensive Skill that could individually wipe out entire villages and level whole plains. His eyes shimmered as they sent Artorious’ death ray zipping towards the three frozen Elders. Darkness crept along his blades and unleashed another Twilight Edge across the Cathedral floor, sweeping through the crushed pews and table and being joined by a cabal of murky Shadow Wraiths that chuckled with laughter as they converged on Garviel, holding him down while the Angel-Arm beam came straight for him.

  The luminescent blue bur of Spectral Snipe threaded around the crushed pillars of the church, each thread splintering off and slowly shooting for the heads of all three foes. Blisters of ice formed in the sky and came raining down upon the blasted ruin to Kaedmon, and it was all the Manus, Tangeon, and Garviel could do to watch as their doom crept slowly, but surely, towards them.

  Timestop: 5 seconds.

  None of them screamed, for none of them had the chance.

  Instead, they saw the light of the Archon travel towards them like an all-consuming abyss coming to snuff out a row of candles.

  They watched, unblinking, as nine different forms of death came right at them.

  Garviel told his body to resist even as he knew it was pointless. In what he now knew for certain were his final moments on this earth, he tried to keep from looking afraid. He didn’t know if he managed it or not.

  He held on to the hope that perhaps the High Cardinal had managed to flee – that he’d managed to heal his wounds while the Archon was distracted. It was funny in a way – he’d never been a man for blind hope. And yet here he was, at the end, desperately believing that fate might still be on their side.

  He decided that he’d curse that ‘fate’ with the last breath he had.

  But when the [Timestop] finally ceased, not a single scream escaped from his throat.

  …

  Langley walked through the chaos of the Conclave Chamber, eyes looking forward through the clearing smoke and strewn debris.

  The great warriors who had assembled here were massacred. Their grand plan to halt the whims of the Archon – squashed like their broken bodies.

  The only one who still clung to life was the very person Langley had come here to see.

  Having crawled away from the carnage, High Cardinal Remiel now sat slumped against a broken wall at the east edge of the chamber, his eyes glazed and hazy, his bald head matted with sweat and grime. His breathing came in short, guttural rasps. He tried desperately not to let his eyes wander down to his torso where his entire lower body had been ripped apart.

  Wheezing, holding on to life through nothing but will alone – that’s how Langley found him.

  The old man met the young preacher’s gaze with cold, withdrawn detachment.

  “Traitor,” he spat.

  Langley regarded him with sorrow. “To you, High Cardinal. But never to this city. Never to the people we are sworn to protect.”

  Remiel let out a groan of pain, fingers twitching as they fell to his side.

  “You – threw your lot in – with that demon,” he managed to croak. “He will be – your undoing.”

  “Possibly. But I’ll take my chances with him over you and our doomed God.”

  “You’ve always – hated Him,” Remiel spat, and Langley watched him lurch forward as though he was trying to vomit some gustatory attack with his last breaths. But the old priest had nothing left in him – nothing that was useful to him, anyway. He slumped right back against the wall and coughed up a splatter of ichor.

  “No,” Langley said. “I loved Kaedmon like a father. He was more of a guardian to me than my own parents ever were. But fathers grow old. They lose sight of the way the world is headed. They cling to their old ways not because they are right, but because they are familiar.”

  Remiel grit his teeth, and Langley was surprised to find that he didn’t even feel like gloating. Here he was, in a position that (if he was being totally honest) he’d wanted for at least a decade – the chance to rub his final victory over this relic of the past in his own face. But he could find no joy in Remiel’s defeat. He couldn’t see the tyrant that he’d always seen before. Right now, all he was looking at was an old, sad man. A man who knew that the legacy he would leave behind would amount to less than a footnote in history.

  So he bent down, hunched over, and decided there was one thing he wanted to do here.

  “Let me ask you this,” he said. “If the Path Kaedmon chose for you brought you to this, what does that tell you about Him?”

  Remiel answered him with another blood-filled cough.

  “You could never understand,” he muttered with his dying breath. “You – someone like you…will never understand…faith…you and…and the rest of the heretics…in this…world…”

  He stopped before he said anything else. Suddenly, his eyes were drawn to something that was moving through the shadows just above Langley’s head.

  “Maybe you’re right,” the young priest said with a shrug. “Faith hasn’t done much for us. So maybe we should try something else.”

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  Remiel took nary a breath as he saw the four eyes of the Dark Angel appear, and the single crimson eye that burned above it.

  With mute horror, he watched the angel lift that tiny, seemingly insignificant hat off its head.

  The High Cardinal of Eastmarch didn’t blink. He didn’t try to escape. All he could do was watch as that pointed hat that was the source of his world’s woes was slowly lowered onto his head.

  And he felt the power that surged through the thing. Strength beyond strength. Spirit Cores far higher than any mortal being had any right to possess.

  In his final moments in his own body, he locked eyes with Langley and then saw the youth turn away, leaving his old Path behind forever.

  …

  Ethan Hawke

  Skills Gained (Memory Siphon): Timestop (Grade S), Adamantine Skein (Grade S), Enlarge Self/Reduce Self (Grade S), Totemic Transformation (Grade S)

  Skills Gained (Possession) System Purge (Grade S)

  Spirit Cores Gained: +10,000 (Tangeon, King of Giants)

  +7550 (Manus, Master of Shapeshifting)

  + 6550 (Garviel, Lord Commander Greycloak)

  +10,000 (Remiel, High Cardinal of Kaedmon)

  Current Spirit Cores: 42,000 - > 68,900

  …that’s it.

  He felt the surge of pure raw strength that filled his being. Now, there would be no more barriers left to cross. No more obstacles in his way.

  He commanded his Angel form to pick him right back up and affix him to its skull. It did so with no emotion at all – zombified by the Spirit Cores that practically radiated power from his tiny form.

  He stepped by Langley as the young priest bowed in reverence, whispering a prayer that might have been something entirely of his own making. Ethan was reassured that the young preacher hadn’t lost his nerve at seeing all this devastation erupt around him. Even with the certainty of defeat, the servants of Kaedmon often wept for what they thought was lost in their demise. Langley, as Ethan had long suspected, was another story entirely.

  Bidding farewell to the priest once more, he walked by the inert bodies and spared them each a single glance as he left them behind. Tangeon – once the mightiest beast in this world – lay with thousands of puncture holes torn through his rock-like skin. Every serrated tooth that jutted from his skull was broken and twisted. His wounds had been such that they had instantly cauterized, so he looked more like some macabre statue that once belonged in the church than a creature who had just resisted him.

  He could have been one of us.

  Yeah. And he chose the wrong side.

  He chose the only side that he felt could give him what he really wanted. I don’t begrudge him for that.

  Manus Raava lay speared through at the opposite end of the room. The master of shapeshifting was now nothing but a mangled mess of different inky limbs and forms. Ethan swept one of his flaming blades over him and found that he could barely be made out as human anymore.

  A human heretic that was pushed to side with those he despised, he thought. Why couldn’t he have just come to us? Wasn’t the Mandate enough to make him see that we’re building something better?

  There’s always gonna be those who cling to the old ways. Up till the point when they’re literally hanging off the edges of their burning homes, pleading for their lives, they’ll still never give up the lies they’ve lived by.

  Ethan’s eyes then lighted on Garviel’s as he stepped out of the ruined church, and something in the Greycloak’s vacant eyes made him think of Jory. He’d thought about him a lot over the past months.

  “We will drag you kicking and screaming into the light,” he said aloud. “Isn’t that the Greycloak’s motto?”

  Not this again, Sys mumbled. Look, we’ve been through this before. You’re conflicted, then you kick ass, let loose a little, and then you’re conflicted again. Doesn’t it tire you out? Doesn’t it bore you? There’s some shit you just don’t think about, man.

  The second we stop thinking is the second we become exactly what we’re fighting against, Ethan replied. Even if…even if it might be too late for that now.

  He cleared the Cathedral’s crumbling arched doorway as this thought came to him. He looked down to see Greycloak soldiers shaking to see him in the flesh, hands reaching for their blades but fumbling at their scabbards.

  Beyond the dense smokescreen, he could see the people of the city bumbling around the streets. All of them just stared. There was barely a whisper between them. Out there, surrounded by the ash and dust that heralded his coming, they seemed like timid ghosts too tired to resist him anymore.

  That’s what they’ve always been, Sys said. See, when you strip all their finery and beliefs and technology away, all you’ve got are a bunch of filthy creatures that crawled out of the mud and decided this world belonged to them.

  Ethan bit his pallid lips as more Camoran citizens added themselves to the sea of faces.

  They were fooled. Nothing more.

  Really, Ethan? You’re still making excuses for them? Come on, what’s this really all about?

  The hopeless, jaded eyes of the humans triggered the memory of the vision before Sys had finished speaking. In truth, he’d held the thought in his mind for the past month, ever since he’d made this plan. He’d told himself that to avoid the vision Lamphrey’s mind had shown him, he’d have to ensure his new world wasn’t threatened – and that meant taking out the top brass of Eastmarch. Now his path was set before him: fly to Mistborne. Take Kaedmon’s head.

  But the dream still haunted him. The vision of dark wings beating in a cold, dead night, spreading a dense fog that choked the entire world. His wings. His miasma of death. Hybrids marching to the tune of his every single thought. His every whim.

  His eyes, glowing with the fiery green light of a tainted God, staring back at him with nothing but an appetite for annihilation.

  “There he is!”

  From out of the chaos, three ripples ran under the broken cobbled streets, each one trailing under the feet of the bemused citizens and finally ending at Ethan’s side.

  Tara, Klax, and Fauna all sprouted up like crimson flowers from the earth, replete in their shadowed Onixian armor. Fauna’s staff was aglow with the [Root March] spell Malak had taught her.

  “Still here?” Tara winked. “I thought you’d have fluttered off by now.”

  Ethan looked down at them and forced a smile.

  “And leave my master assassins behind? Not a chance. Nice work with the barrier, by the by.”

  “Our master mage did most of the work,” Klax huffed, nudging Fauna who straightened up and smoothed the folds of her armor. “We could not have bested the Archamagi without her counterspells.”

  “If I’m being honest,” Fauna said. “The world is better off without that woman in it.”

  “Speaking of…did you, y’know, finish the job?”

  Ethan regarded Tara’s smirk with a grim frown, and for a moment the MInxit thought he might just have regretted the execution of their plan.

  But when he spoke, it was with conviction.

  “It’s done,” he said. “The Cardinal’s Skill is mine, as are the cores for Possession Rank S. Now all that remains…”

  He let that sentence hang, overtaken by the sight of the terrified townsfolk again. He could already hear them muttering the word on their lips – ‘monster’, ‘monster’, ‘monster’ – like a mantra that would dispel him and his kind from this world.

  For a moment, the thought took him – of simply ending their lives right here and now. Of alleviating the suffering that was still to come before this world truly began to set itself right. Already, there’d been so much work – so much work – just to get to this point. And now, when he should have been celebrating his finest victory, he couldn’t help but feel numb. He couldn’t help but feel that maybe just clearing the slate, starting afresh…that might be the best way – actually – the most humane way to -

  “I will see to them.”

  He felt a presence beside his feet and looked down to see Langley standing beside him.

  The priest was covered in dust, but his face still shone with that characteristic youthful glimmer he’d always maintained.

  “Ugh,” Tara whispered. “This guy. The pretty little priest.”

  Klax and Fauna chuckled to themselves as Ethan regarded him, his momentarily lapse of self appropriately distracted.

  “You’re ready, Langley?” he asked him.

  The lad nodded. “I am the last Cardinal. It is fitting that I herald the new dawn. These people are frightened, Ethan, not of you, but of what you represent. The fear the erasure of who they once were. They just don’t know what that really means yet. They don’t know that it means they can be not who they must be, but who they wish to be.”

  Ethan felt his smile return.

  “I will stay with them,” Langley said, looking up at the angel with no fear now. Not a hint of doubt. “I will guide them as you have guided me. That way – perhaps – I can atone for the lies I’ve spewed all my life.”

  Ethan bent down in full view of the dismayed crowds, and offered one giant hand to the first priest who’d ever believed in him.

  “Langley,” he said. “You’ve already proven who you really are.”

  It was a moment history would remember – the sight of the Dark Angel emerging from the decimated remnants of Kaedmon’s Cathedral and shaking the hands of the only Cardinal left. It was an image that would live in the minds of all assembled like a Core Skill – something that would become an integral part of themselves and a staple story in their culture in the years to come.

  But its significance was most felt by the man who graciously accepted the Archon’s hand. Langley gulped down his fear, and all his woes about what should be, and began to think about what he could do to make things as good as they could be.

  “They will be safe, Ethan,” he said. “And when the time comes for your ascension, they will be ready.”

  Ethan laid another hand on the Priest’s. He wished he could communicate to him just how much it meant to have a human that had made the choice to be on his side.

  “Take care, Langley,” he said. “And good luck.”

  Nothing more had to be said. He nodded to the hybrids and lifted them onto his shoulders, spreading his quadruped wings wide and scattering all the smoke and ash away, letting the people see him without blemish or barrier.

  Then he took to the skies and left the capital of Eastmarch behind, watching its citizens disappear till they were nothing but specks of dust on the dry earth.

  “I’ll never get tired of this!” Tara beamed. “Seein’ the world from on high – watching ‘em squirm, gotta admit it’s got a certain charm, eh Klaxy?

  ‘Klaxy’ squirmed a little as Tara poked him in his ribs, muttering a garbled reply that he’d rather keep his paws on the ground.

  “You don’t wanna be the world’s first flying Lycae?” Tara jibed. “How about it, Faun? Can we grow our brawny canine a set of wingy-wings or what?”

  As they flew, Fauna was focused on Ethan – on the crimson eye set in his hat-form that she knew truly represented who he was. Perched on his left shoulder, she had the chance to see the intense focus in his face. The kind of focus that hadn’t once left him in all these months, even after all the victories they’d had over their enemies.

  It looked like he still couldn’t relax. And she knew why.

  “Uh, Ethan?” she muttered in his ear. “Mistborne Isle’s to the East…”

  Tara and Klax stopped their joking and looked at him then, too, seeing exactly what Fauna saw in all his eyes.

  “I know,” he said. “But there’s one last place we have to go first.”

  -End of the Camoran Arc-